Édouard Stephan discovered NGC 449 = St XII-11 on 11 Nov 1881 with the 31" reflector at the Marseille Observatory. Stephan's original published position matches CGCG 502-018 = PGC 4587, although the RA is slightly off in the NGC. The RNGC misidentifies NGC 447 as NGC 449 (reversing the identifications of NGC 447 and NGC 449. CGCG labels NGC 449 as IC 1661. Although it is possible that IC 1661 (discovered by Barnard) is a duplicate observation of NGC 449, Corwin feels it is more likely that IC 1661 is a duplicate of NGC 451. See RNGC Corrections #3 and Thomson's "CGCG Corrections".

400/500mm - 17.5" (9/19/87): very faint, very small, round, bright core. Forms a close pair with NGC 451 1.9' SE. Located 2.9' SW of mag 6.0 SAO 54567. Incorrectly listed as NGC 447 in RNGC and IC 1661 in CGCG.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb